


Two Things

by Isis



Category: Gideon the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir
Genre: But don't we all?, Gen, Jeannemary has a tiny little crush on Gideon, POV Jeannemary Chatur, Teenage Drama
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-18 12:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21760582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/pseuds/Isis
Summary: There were two things Jeannemary Chatur wanted:  to fight for the Emperor Undying by the side of her necromancer, and for the stupid pimple on her chin to go away already.
Comments: 53
Kudos: 185
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	Two Things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shadowkeeper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkeeper/gifts).



> Thanks to yhlee for beta-reading!

There were two things Jeannemary Chatur wanted: to fight for the Emperor Undying by the side of her necromancer, and for the stupid pimple on her chin to go away already. As she and Isaac followed the skeleton servant to their quarters – through wide corridors and up narrow stairways, through moldering rooms with tattered curtains flapping in the breeze let in by glassless windows – she reflected, gloomily, that neither seemed likely to happen any time soon.

When they closed the dusty door that separated them from the rest of Canaan House, Isaac finally let himself relax. Not that anyone would have known that but Jeannemary, who recognized the almost imperceptible line between his tense slouch and his somewhat less tense slouch, and threw her arms around him. 

“This is horrible,” she murmured into his ear.

“Terrible,” he agreed mournfully. He stepped back and sank onto the disgusting couch, and dust clouded around them both. “Do you think Abigail and Magnus have their rooms nearby?”

“Wherever they are, I hope their rooms are in better shape than these,” said Jeannemary. She looked at the couch, trying to decide if she really wanted to sit on it. It probably teemed with bugs. But it was the most comfortable-looking piece of furniture in the room – all the other chairs were uncushioned wood, with elegant curves and peeling varnish – and anyway, Isaac was slumped there, so she sat next to him, twisting the weird iron ring Teacher had given her between her fingers.

It had seemed so exciting to be summoned by the Emperor. Especially after the disappointment of having to delay their deployment because of Isaac’s stupid mumps. Magnus had been all, “So, we’ll have you around for longer! I’m in no hurry to lose you to war – not lose you like _that_ , of course!” he’d hurried to add. “But you’ll be even better on the battlefield with a bit more practice!”

Naturally she had been furious at him, and challenged him immediately to spar with her so she could show him just how much more practice she _didn’t_ need. But now, after seeing the necros and cavaliers of all the other houses, she felt seriously out of her depth. It wasn’t just that she and Isaac were so much younger than everyone else; Magnus was more than twice her age, older than her father would have been had he still lived, and she could wipe the floor with him. It was the way everyone else _looked_ at them. It was totally obvious that they were all thinking, dismissively, that she and Isaac were just children. And Jeannemary _hated_ that.

(But what was worse was the fear, which she kept buried deep in her heart in a place that she would die before showing anyone, that they really _were_ just children. That they were not up to this grand and awful task. In the Fourth House they had learned what they had been taught, how to build thanergy into a corpse-bomb (Isaac) and how to eviscerate a living opponent (Jeannemary). But they had not been taught how to teach themselves. The task of figuring out how to become Lyctors was not like being in a room with no door and being told to find the door and open it; it was like being dropped in a city with a million billion buildings and being told to find the room with no door.) 

“Let’s check the place out,” she finally said, and they went from room to room, poking at the decrepit furniture and moth-eaten draperies. There was a long, narrow balcony running the length of their apartments, and after they’d gone through everything they stood at the railing, looking at the dimly lit plaza below and the darkness of the sea beyond that. Jeannemary wondered if she could throw a stone past the level below, all the way into the water. Maybe she’d see if she could pry out some of the broken tiles on the floor, and try it.

When a knock at the door turned out to be Abigail and Magnus, the nervous buzz that had been running through them both subsided. “Can you believe it?” asked Isaac. He swept a hand out to indicate their rooms, or maybe, all of Canaan House. “This is so….” 

He was going to say “weird,” Jeannemary knew, but Abigail got there first. “Marvelous,” she said, and her eyes were shining. “Let me look through your apartment, won’t you? I can’t imagine all the things this place has seen. All the history.”

Magnus shook his head fondly. “She’s been like this since we landed.”

“I’m hoping there’s a library somewhere. Or documentation, information – _histories_. Oh, I wish we weren’t barred from communication networks.”

“Do you know what we’re supposed to do?” asked Isaac. “To become Lyctors?”

Abigail’s face firmed. “I don’t, but I will find out.”

“ _We_ will find out,” said Jeannemary, meaning all of them in the room, the necromancers and cavaliers of the Fourth and the Fifth.

Abigail and Magnus looked at her, then at each other. Instantly she knew she’d said something – well, not stupid, but bold and reckless, which wasn’t her fault, because she was of the Fourth, wasn’t she? 

“Jeannemary, dear,” said Abigail, in the tone of voice that made her feel as though she was about five years old. “You heard what the priests said. There will be trials, and they may be dangerous. Magnus and I feel that we owe it to your House to ensure your safety and your success.”

“We can ensure our own success,” she said, and she knew she sounded sullen, but she didn’t care.

“Oh, I’m sure of that!” said Magnus. “But the Fourth would have our heads if we let you walk headfirst into something inimical without having checked it first.”

“We may be young,” said Isaac, “but we’re not stupid.”

Abigail nodded. “No, you’re not stupid. You embody the best virtues of your house: bravery, fidelity, determination.” She smiled, a bit sadly, and Jeannemary could see Abigail’s suppressed maternal feelings leaking out around the edges of that smile. “But it’s a pity the Fourth has never valued common sense.”

“We are sure you will both be up to the task, when we all know what it is,” Magnus said soothingly, before either of them could protest Abigail’s assessment. (Not that it wasn’t completely valid.) “But let us scout ahead for you, so to speak. Abigail has considerably more experience than any of us in this regard, through both training and study. And I have – well, I have Abigail,” he said, patting his wife’s hand. 

Isaac rolled his eyes. “Well, we’ll see you in the morning, and we can discuss a plan, all right? Because we want to be in on it, too.”

“That sounds like an excellent idea,” said Magnus. “I’m completely beat, and I’m sure you both are, too.”

Jeannemary hadn’t actually felt tired, but once Magnus and Abigail had left she felt a sudden wave of exhaustion pass over her, like she’d walked through a ward that left fatigue in its wake. She should have done some exercises or something, but all she wanted to do was collapse into bed. Isaac looked the same, like something had gone out of him. Maybe it was the musty air of this half-collapsed wreck of a palace.

“You’re not going to sleep _there_ , are you?” he asked, as they gaped at the ridiculous cot at the foot of the even more ridiculous four-poster bed.

“Of course not,” she said, climbing into the big bed with him. They’d been sleeping together for years – not in an Abigail-and-Magnus way (yuck!) but like the siblings they effectively were – and it wasn’t long after Isaac began to snore that Jeannemary fell asleep herself.

* * *

Over the next few days, Abigail and Magnus led them on a slow, cautious exploration of Canaan House. It was kind of infuriating, because _slow_ and _cautious_ were so foreign to Fourth House ways as to be practically taboo, but on the other hand, it was embarrassingly reassuring to have actual grown-ups taking the lead, even though Jeannemary hated to admit it even to herself.

Isaac spent a lot of time standing in the places that caught his and Abigail’s attention, “feeling the thanergy,” as he said. The skeleton servants fascinated him, and unnerved him. Abigail seemed to approve, and encouraged him; she also paid a lot of attention to the physical structure of Canaan House, though Jeannemary wondered whether she was interested in it because of the signatures of thanergy in the rotting beams and crumbling stone, like Isaac, or just because it was all stupefyingly ancient, and Abigail _lived_ for stupefyingly ancient stuff.

She herself was less interested by the palace and its skeletons, and more by the scions of the other Houses. Necromancers of anywhere other than the Fourth and Fifth were strange and exotic creatures who were completely outside her experience, and she found herself dawdling behind the others, lurking at intersections and the edges of the big rooms hoping for a glimpse of Coronabeth Tridentarius’ glowing aura, or of that weirdo from the Ninth, skulking around in her flowing black robes and skullface makeup. The others caught her attention as well, but not to the degree those two did. It was like they were the most opposite opposites that ever opposited. 

(She wondered what would happen if the Third and Ninth necromancers ever touched each other. Maybe they would cancel each other out and explode in a cloud of bone-dust and sparkles. Not that there was any chance of that: the Ninth necro seemed to actively repel human contact. Maybe there was a rule about that on the Ninth, along with all their other strange habits.)

The other cavaliers were even more fascinating than the necromancers. Part of it was professional curiosity, of course. Jeannemary had long idolized the Second, the leaders of the Cohort, and seeing Lieutenant Dyas, ramrod-straight and utterly precise, made her yearn again for deployment to the front. But then, watching Dyas spar against that oily prat from the Third, she had that horrible sinking feeling of inadequacy again: it was like watching two clockwork soldiers thrusting and parrying, faultless rapier-strokes as crisp as the white Cohort uniform Dyas wore. 

“I’m sure you could take either of them,” Magnus said, following her gaze. “Though maybe not both at once!”

“Don’t say that!” hissed Jeannemary as Coronabeth glanced toward them. Magnus had an unfortunate knack of calling attention to her exactly when she didn’t want any.

He compounded his rudeness by pulling her onto the flagstones after Prince Tern had finally managed to get a touch on the Second – the Third’s cavalier looked utterly devastated when he looked around and saw that his Princess had left the room and missed his triumph, ha! – and so she vowed to herself that she would destroy Magnus in front of everybody, just to prove her point. But they’d barely taken their stances when the missing Coronabeth sailed into the room with the black-robed cavalier of the Ninth, and everything and everyone came to a stop.

Jeannemary stared at Gideon the Ninth in mingled horror and fascination. Magnus had totally mortified her and Isaac the first morning by getting up and _walking over_ to that bizarrely-costumed freakshow of a cavalier, and then, just when she and Isaac had thought things couldn’t get worse – actually _talking_ to her. The Ninth had just stared at him – or at least, that’s what it had looked like, because how could you tell, under the sunglasses and the skull-paint? (Maybe they didn’t have actual human beings in the Ninth; maybe it was all skeletons except for the Reverend Daughter and her cavalier, and that was why they painted their faces like that, to fit in with all the rest.) Not that Ninth’s absolute lack of reaction had thrown Magnus off his stride in the least. Isaac had elbowed her and whispered that if Magnus got skewered by the creepy cav she would have to go defend the honor of the Fifth, and she had been relieved when it didn’t actually come to that. 

Except now Jeannemary thought that it was a shame that Gideon the Ninth _hadn’t_ turned Magnus into shishkebob, because if she had, Magnus wouldn’t be prattling on, telling everybody that stupid story about that stupid duel which she didn’t even remember (though he seemed to delight in telling it over and over, so now, of course, she knew every detail: his misguided attempt to go easy on her, which let her almost disarm him; how his trousers, intended for a banquet and not a duel, had ripped with his first lunge; the stupid freaking _bread knife_ ), and she kind of wished that the Ninth would revisit that lost opportunity and kill him now. Or just kill _her_ , which would be a preferable alternative to her current course of _dying of embarrassment_. At least it would be faster and more humane.

Instead she stalked off to the other side of the room and pretended to be dead. Magnus, as usual, refused to shut up. The only good thing about his utterly cringe-worthy blabber was that it inspired Coronabeth Tridentarius to suggest that he spar with the Ninth – and that made Jeannemary grin into the newly-polished surface of the wooden bench she’d flung herself on. If the skull-cavalier was any good, she’d destroy him. Not that Magnus would do anything but smile self-deprecatingly and tell another stupid story, but it would go a long way toward making her feel better, anyway.

“Knuckle-knives?” Prince Tern’s voice floated across the room to her. He sounded as though it was a personal offense, even though he wasn’t going to be the one on the receiving end of any blows. But it made her turn her head and crack an eye open, anyway, because whoa, things were getting real. Knuckle-knives were even weirder than using a bread knife for the offhand, and definitely way deadlier. “The Ninth uses knuckle-knives?” he said again.

They all argued for a few minutes. Well, the Third and Dyas argued; Magnus, for a change, kept his mouth shut, and Gideon the Ninth stood like an impassive black statue. Jeannemary abandoned her pretense, opened her eyes, and sat up. Okay, it was happening, and she did not want to miss a moment of the match.

It was a good thing she was paying attention, because a moment was all it took. The Ninth cavalier moved like a cracked whip, turning and sliding under Magnus’ attempts to pierce her guard; then her rapier snaked out, forcing Magnus’ sword down and then rebounding to tap him gently on the chest. The knuckle-knives, which she’d swept behind her back at the start, never even came into play.

Jeannemary could not stop staring. Gideon’s arms, when they’d emerged from under the robes (which she hadn’t even taken off for the match!) were huge. The shirt (black, naturally) that covered her skin was not particularly tight, but tantalizing hints of bicep and triceps could be seen as she moved, sparking immediate envy.

It was _completely_ unfair.

Not unfair to Magnus, who had taken his defeat with his usual infuriating good grace, but to Jeannemary, who had the sudden awful conviction that despite her vaunted Chatur bloodline and all the push-ups, press-ups, and curls she did daily, her body would never look that awesome. As Magnus, wiping the sweat from his brow and looking rather abashed, came towards her, she mentally revised her list of goals. 

There were two things Jeannemary Chatur wanted: to fight for the Emperor Undying by the side of her necromancer, and to have biceps as big as Gideon the Ninth’s. She wasn’t exactly sure which was more important to her, but she knew one thing: relatively speaking, the pimple on her chin was no big deal.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Two Things](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22166950) by [sisi_rambles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisi_rambles/pseuds/sisi_rambles)




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